American dream needs a new look
/The Boston Herald
BEVERLY BECKHAM
Newsweek's cover story this week is titled "America's Lost Dream" yet it isn't about a lost dream at all.
It's about a dream come true, about a country that grabbed for the gold ring and got it, that got everything it ever wanted, and then some, and now must decide what it wants next.
Since the end of World War II, life in America has improved in countless ways. Jet travel, air conditioning, interstate highways, direct long-distance dialing, television, automatic washers and dryers, antibiotics - all these things have made our lives more comfortable.
So too have certain changes in the way we live. In 1945 about half the men over 65 still worked, retirement was a privilege afforded only to the rich - or the disabled. Before the war only 9 percent of the population had health insurance; now 87 percent have it.
What these facts make you realize is that the problems that face us now are not the result of any national malaise or failure. We didn't do anything wrong. We got exactly what we wanted: better and more. That better and more brought with them a whole new set of problems is today's problem.
Affordable health care is the number one problem. Because we continue to strive for better and more for more and more people, our health costs are staggering. "We are a more compassionate society than we were 20 or 30 years ago," Newsweek says. We care about each other.
And that's not such a bad thing.
Compassion is, after all, behind Oregon's plan to ration health care. Oregon has asked the federal government to waive its Medicaid regulations and allow the state to use Medicaid money to help those who need it most. If Oregon gets federal approval about 65,000 more poor women and children will have access to health care.
But the flip side of the coin is that to pay for these additional people, many illnesses currently covered by Medicaid will not be anymore. Most are minor, things which would eventually cure themselves: sore throats, hives, sprains.
But others are not so minor. Oregon has proposed the denial of coverage for premature babies who have virtually no chance of surviving.
Virtually no chance of surviving. Is probability to be a factor in deciding life and death?
What Oregon is doing, of course, is testing the waters, dipping a little toe into an ethical morass. Someone has to.
Consider this: In New York last November, a doctor performing an illegal abortion on a woman who was more than 24 weeks pregnant, bungled the job and cut off the baby's arm. The child was born alive and remains alive. Whose child is she? Her mother didn't want her. Who pays for her care? What does "virtually no chance of surviving mean?"
Does it mean you let a child who has survived birth, then simply die?
Perhaps birth weight will be the determining factor. We're a nation comfortable with numbers. Numbers are so dependable - we can count calories, know our cholesterol levels, determine average life spans.
Do we try to save a baby who weighs 2 pounds, but not one who weighs a half an ounce less. Is that not reasonable?
Of course not.
So what does America want next? Don't we want all babies to live, all the disabled to have the newest technology, all those with failing hearts and lungs and kidneys to have new hearts and lungs and kidneys, all those who need bone marrow transplants to have them? Don't we want to take care of the old and the dying? Don't we love that an 18-year-old North Dakota boy who had his arms severed in a farm accident six weeks ago has had them reattached and is back home again?
Does the cost matter?
Of course not.
Even if there were virtually no chance of the procedure working?
But there is always a chance.
A caring society recognizes this. A caring society does not set limits. Oregon may have been motivated by the best of intentions, by legitimate compassion for the poor, but compassion is like health care. It must not be rationed. It must be for all.
Beverly Beckham is the author of "A Gift of Time" (Host Creative Communications).
